Under Motor
11 March 2009
John
Well, today is Wednesday, March 11, and we have been under motor for the last 48 hours and, looking at our weather predictions, will be under motor for at least another 48 hours. There is just no wind! We have under 4 knots of wind at the moment from the east, not enough to even make our sails flap, never mind fill them and get some drive out of them. As mentioned in a previous blog report, it makes no difference if we were 200 nm north of our position - there is even just as much wind there!
Today we are going to inspect our fuel tanks and assess our fuel situation. We "think" we have sufficient fuel to get us to Recife but you will notice the "think" above. This is because we know our fuel gauges are not working properly and our calculations are based on engine hours and not what we actually have in the tanks. We do still have a couple of plastic drums of spare fuel but need to know actual tank fuel remaining.
Fishing is still a "no takers" affair. We continue to trail our line and lure but even the fish seem to be taking things a bit slow - must be the heat or the fact that, due to the dead calm sea, they can see the lure perfectly and are laughing at us as they know it ain't real. Whatever, we will get one soon, I hope.
We were all full of ourselves the other day with predicting our date of arrival in Recife. It is a bit of fun doing so when you have little else to do. However, we will have to reassess our arrival date, never mind the time, in line with the wind situation and add a day or so onto the length of our trip. At noon today we have 955 nautical miles to go but our speed there with the weather conditions we have is anybody's guess.
Well, as you mot probably realise, there is not much going on aboard "In The Wind" and boredom is the word.
Until the next blog report, regards to all from Kyle, Richard and myself, John.